Georgian is a little-known Indo-European language that sometimes preserves literary artifacts that are important for the history of biblical interpretation. It comes up in PaleoJudaica from time to time, for example, here, here, here, here, and here. And Adam McCollum has posted a lot on Georgian over at the hmmlorientalia blog. So it is of at least tangential interest to note that written Georgian (or proto-Georgian?) may go back much earlier than had hitherto been suspected.
The script as a whole bears no relation to any other alphabet, although [chief excavator Vakhtang] Licheli detects similarities to letters in ancient Greek and Aramaic.UPDATE: Adam McCollum e-mails:
He says there’s no doubt that the carvings are part of an alphabet rather than a decorative pattern.
“In a decoration you see repetition every two, four, six times. Here there’s no repetition.” He notes the skill of the carver in smoothing the design. “He was very comfortable doing this—this was not his first time.”
Licheli says it’s reasonable to assume that the writing dates to the seventh century B.C., when the temple is believed to have been built.
I hope you don’t mind my writing with a correction. In your post on the Nat. Geo. story about the inscription found in Georgia, you introduce Georgian as „a little-known Indo-European language“. That’s only partly right: it’s little-known, but it is not Indo-European. It and a few other languages of the area belong to Kartvelian, genetically unrelated to other language families.I don't know Georgian myself and this time I cut corners and didn't double check my memory. That'll larn me. Many thanks, Adam, for the correction.
